THE SWEET CHEAT
All photographs by Tod Seelie unless otherwise noted.
www.todseelie.com
THE SWEET CHEAT
CAST:
Kevin Lee.......................................................................................................Trevor Zhou
Cassandra.............................................................................................. Monica Hunken
Serena/Tara........................................................................................Hannah Corrigan
Eddie Cortez /Ricky Martin..............................................................................Ben Cerf
Ernst Wentworth.........................................................................................E. James Ford
Bike Messenger 1/ Grad Student 1/ Bob........................................................... M Scrivo
Bike Messenger 2/ Grad Student 2.......................................................Lizzie Steelheart
Deanna.....................................................................................................Helen Buyniski
Irving Paley/ Ferryman........................................................................... Dylan Gauthier
CREW:
Assistant Director...........................................................................Theresa Buchheister
Music and Sounds...................................................................................George Graham
Lights.......................................................................................................... Jason Sinopoli
Costumes................................................................................................Sarah McMillan
R
Alita Edgar
Sets................................................................................................................Robyn Hasty
Props.................................................................................... Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels
Tech................................................................................................... Bobby Dangerously
House Manager.........................................................................................Kevin Balktick
Photography......................................................................................................Tod Seelie
Design......................................................................................................... Jason Engdahl
Video................................................................................................... Jonathan Jacobson
Casting................................................................................................. Alexandra Caffall
VIDEOS:
Actors.........................Ben Cerf, Hannah Corrigan, Dylan Gauthier, Trevor Zhou
Photos................................................................................................................Tod Seelie
Edits..........................................................................................................Todd Chandler
Music and Sounds.................................................................................George Graham
Costumes.................................................................................................Ellen Johansing
Sound Recordings...........................................................Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels
Director...............................................................................................................Jeff Stark
With Mark Krawczuk, Shalin Scupham, Stephan von Muehlen, Radek Szczesny,
Joe Riley, Adam Katzman, Hannah Curtis, and Vanessa Cronan.
Adapted from the Albertine Notes by Rick Moody.
Directed by Jeff Stark.
PRODUCTION NOTES
The play is adapted from the 2002 short story The Albertine Notes, by Rick Moody.
The company performs in a derelict building. The audience buys tickets at Grand
Central station and rides a train to the performance. Crew members warn the
audience about risks of the performance on the train.
Scenes are played on sets throughout the building complex. The audience moves
from place to place, following actors, music, and sound cues.
Interscenes (entr’acte) are micro-scenes that take place amid the linear, narrative
scenes. They are impressionistic, and the audience does not need to see them all or
experience them in a particular sequence. In fact, the audience might entirely miss
more than one of them. Some interscenes will happen simultaneous with scenes.
PROLOGUE
LOCATION: Northbound train.
SETTING: A lecture hall.
[M Scrivo warns the audience of the risks and dangers of attending the
performance.]
Wentworth: In the next 15 minutes, the New York City that you know will no
longer exist.
Most of lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn were incinerated when an
unknown person detonated a nuclear explosion in Union Square. Millions of
people were killed and many more injured. Your family, lovers, pets, and coworkers are all gone. And you were left to carry their memory.
This all happens in the next 13 minutes.
If you were standing in Harlem that day facing Southwest, you would have seen
the entire skyline subsumed in a perfect blinding light. A dark cloud rose above
the remaining buildings and stretched its arms over the city. The nausea you
felt, as your cells were slowly poisoned by radioactive particles, would gradually
overtake you and you’d collapse to the ground vomiting.
All of this, just 12 minutes from now.
The years following the blast were filled with tragedy for those who survived.
Most were driven mad by their memories. The rest would seek some sort of
relief. When you’re used to living a comfortable middle-class life, going to the
organic farmer’s market on the weekend, or enjoying dinners out at the new
Indian restaurant, you’re bound to become very uncomfortable when 50 square
blocks of your city suddenly look like a NASA photo of Mars.
[Deanna, who has been quietly watching the prologue, nods off and falls out of
her chair.]
Oh, dear. Miss?! Miss, are you alright? Could someone please attend to her. A
young woman has just collapsed in the aisle. Forgive us ladies and gentlemen, for
the brief interruption.
Grad Student 2: I think she’s high.
Wentworth: [Exasperated.] Good lord. Then get her out of here. We have an
extremely limited amount of time to prepare and we can’t afford interruptions
from a worthless junkie. Make sure she’s put somewhere safe ... Wretched thing.
[Grad Student leads Deanna to the back of the car. Ernst waits for them to
leave.]
My apologies for the disturbance. I assure you, it won’t happen again.
[Checks his watch.]
Unfortunately, our brief window of time has grown even briefer. The further
this train travels, the closer we get to what changed everything.
It’s only seven minutes now. Seven minutes until we arrive in New York City
after the blast. After the fires. After the evacuation. After the trauma units filled
with burn victims.
Crime syndicates now control the streets and the remaining residents have taken
refuge in the outer-boroughs or barricaded themselves in college campuses,
abandoned warehouses, and old armories. People just turned their backs on
Manhattan, which is the center of nothing now, except maybe of society ladies
with radiation burns. It is nothing but a landfill.
You will be a witness to what remains. Pay attention. Listen carefully. Remember
what you see. The world is filled with forgetters now.
E. James Ford wrote this prologue with help from zombie newsreels and the Albertine Notes.
SCENE 1
LOCATION: Out building, third floor. Long room. Corner.
SETTING: Kevin Lee’s armory building/the newspaper office/a diner.
MUSIC: The Mind Is a Waiting Room on portable amp.
[Kevin Lee in a chair to the audience. Tara, Bob, Deanna in view. Tara wears a
phone headset.]
Kevin Lee: [Into a recorder.] The first time I got high all I did was make sure
these notes came out all right. I mean, I wanted the girl at the magazine to offer
me work again, and that was going to happen only if the story sparkled. There
wasn’t much work then because of the explosion.
That was before Albertine.
Street name for the buzz of a lifetime. Bitch goddess of the overwhelming past.
Albertine. Rapids in the river of time. Take up the Albertine eyedropper and
any memory you’ve ever had is available to you all over again.
Not a memory like you’ve experienced it before, not a little tremor in some
register of your helter-skelter consciousness, like, “Oh yeah, I remember when
I ate peanut butter and jelly with Serena in Boston Commons and drank rum
out of paper cups.”
No. The actual event itself, playing in front of you as though you were
experiencing it for the first time. There’s Serena in blue jeans with patches on the
knee, the green sweatshirt that goes with her eyes, drinking the rum a little too
fast and spitting up some of it, picking her teeth with her deep red nails, shade
called “lycanthrope,” and there’s the taste of super-chunky peanut butter, in the
sandwiches, stale pretzel rods. The smell of a city park at the moment when the
rain dampens the pavement, car exhaust, the sound of kids fighting over the
rules of softball, a homeless dude scamming you for a sip of your rum.
Get the idea?
It almost goes without saying that Albertine appeared in a certain socioeconomic sector not long after the blast. When you’re used to living a
comfortable middle-class life, when you’re used to going to the organic farmer’s
market on the weekend, maybe a couple of dinners out at the new Indian place,
you’re bound to become very uncomfortable when 50 square blocks of your city
suddenly look like a NASA photo of Mars.
You’re bound to look for some relief when you’re camped in a high school
gymnasium pouring condensed milk over government-issued cornflakes. Under
the circumstances, your memory sustains you, right? So you take the eyedropper,
hold open your lid, and escape into the past. Afternoons in the stadium, those
lights on the turf, the first roar of the crowd. Or how about your first concert?
Or your first kiss?
Only going to cost you twenty-five bucks.
I’m Kevin Lee. Chinese-American, third generation, which doesn’t mean my
dad worked in a delicatessen to get me into MIT. It means my father was an
IT venture capitalist and my mother was a microbiologist. I dropped out of
UMASS and moved to New York to get away from their disappointment. I
got a job writing for one of the alternative weeklies. It was something. But the
newspaper office and nine-tenths of its reporting staff were incinerated. Not like
I need to bring all of that up again. If you need to assume anything, assume that
all silences from now on have grief in them.
Tara: Look, you don’t have to like the assignment, just do the assignment. If you
don’t want it there are 50 others behind you who do.
Kevin Lee: The editor was called Tara. She had turquoise hair. She looked like
a girl I knew when I was younger. There were a lot of stories. Lots of different
experiences. Lots of fibs, exaggerations, innuendoes, rumors. Not only did
Albertine trigger bad memories as frequently as good ones -- this is the lore -but she also allowed you to remember the future.
Tara: Find out if it’s true. Find out if we can get to the future on it.
Kevin Lee: Why? What do you want to do with it?
Tara: None of your business. [Beat.] Maybe see if I’m ever going to get a
promotion.
Kevin Lee: Large-scale drug dealing, it’s sort of like beta-testing. There are
unscrupulous people around. Try giving your drug to a hundred and fifty
thousand disenfranchised members of the new poor in a recently devastated
American city.
But these bad memories, it became a problem. One guy I interviewed, early on
when I was chasing the story, he spoke about having only moments of intense
jealousy. He was even weeping when we spoke. On the comedown. I’d taken him
out to an all-night diner. Where Atlantic Avenue meets up with the Conduit.
The guy, we’ll say his name is Bob.
Bob: Nina was a friend of mine. An old friend, and we were going out to
breakfast for work. I’d just ordered -- two eggs, sunny side up, coffee, no cream
-- and she gets this look on her face. Determination. Pity. She tells me she’s with
my wife. She says it just like this: “Bob, Maura has been attracted to me since
your wedding.”
Kevin Lee: What did you say?
Bob: Nothing. But I remembered everything after I dropped. Everything. 50
bucks for two. Two chances at a sweet memory. Instead I remember that damn
conversation. Everything I thought about. What they had done to each other in
bed, the sounds, the smell.
Kevin Lee: When was this?
Bob: Seventeen years ago. And the thing is, she’s gone now. Jesus, Maura is dead
in the blast and I never told her I regretted all of that. I never told her what was
great about those years together.
Kevin Lee: What’s it like?
Bob: Albertine. It’s like someone whispering in your ear. It’s like the atmosphere
is three parts jealousy, one part oxygen.
Kevin Lee: Albertine users started reporting memories of things yet to happen.
Elections. International stocks. Hurricane season. The dealers didn’t care.
Because garbageheads and gamblers lived right next to each other, know what I
mean? One vice is like another. These guys were all looking to cop, and they sat
like autistics in a room with sheetrock torn from the walls, in search of the name
of the greyhound that was going to take the next race. Teeth were falling out of
their heads because they believed if they just hung on long enough they would
receive the vision.
There were some issues with a belief system like this. On Albertine, the visions
of the past were mixed up with the alleged future. And sometimes these were
nightmarish visions. You had to know where to cast your gaze. The drug wasn’t
advanced. It was like using a lawn mower to pick wildflowers.
Deanna: I was going to church after the blast, you know, because I was kind
of feeling like God should be doing something. I was in church and it was
beautiful. Any church still standing was beautiful, with all the horrible clouds
all the time, everybody getting sick. I had a vision.
Kevin Lee: What kind of vision?
Deanna: I saw myself driving home from church, and I saw a car pulling out
toward the reservoir, and I had this feeling that the car pulling out toward the
reservoir was some kind of bad omen, you know? I could see that Jesus was
telling me this.
Kevin Lee: How did you know it was Jesus?
Deanna: It wasn’t a dream. I could see it. Some potion was going to be emptied
into the reservoir. I saw it. Definite.
Kevin: A potion? Then what happened?
Deanna: The priest took me to the bishop, and the bishop took me to the
archbishop, and the archbishop asked to dilate my eyes.
Kevin: Oh.
Deanna: And that was that.
SCENE 2
LOCATION: Out building, third floor. Long room. Doorway.
SETTING: A city park.
MUSIC: God Mouth Corridor and Kill Front on portable amp.
[Cassandra with a red scarf on her head, nodded out on a schoolyard swing
with chains and a wooden seat. Kevin examines her face and lifts her arms. She’s
drowsy.]
Kevin: What’s your name?
Cassandra: Cassandra.
Kevin: Really?
Cassandra: Mamma.
Kevin Lee: Hey, I’m doing a story. About Albertine. For the newspaper. I was
wondering if I could ask you a few questions.
Cassandra: Ask me any question. I’m like the oracle at Delphi, boyfriend.
Kevin Lee: What’s my name?
Cassandra: Your name is Kevin Lee. You’re from Massachusetts.
Kevin Lee: OK. Uh. What am I writing about?
Cassandra: You’re writing about Albertine, and you’re in way over your head
already. And the batteries on your recorder are going to run out soon.
Kevin Lee: [Beat.] What do you know about the origins of Albertine?
Cassandra: What do you want to know?
Kevin Lee: Are you high now?
Cassandra: Have you ever seen rain?
Kevin Lee: What do you mean?
Cassandra: I’d need to have been there to have a memory of it.
Kevin Lee: [Beat.] What do you know about the origins of Albertine?
Cassandra: Everybody’s heard something.
Kevin Lee: I haven’t.
Cassandra: You’re lying.
Kevin Lee: Tell me.
Cassandra: You have to be inside. Take the drug. Then you’ll be inside.
Kevin Lee: Inside what?
Cassandra: Memory.
Kevin Lee: [Beat.] Was Albertine around before the blast?
Cassandra: You don’t believe those conspiracies.
Kevin: I don’t know if the government is competent enough for conspiracy.
Cassandra: That’s one version.
Kevin Lee: What do you mean?
Cassandra: You need to go see the man.
Kevin Lee: [Beat.] What do you know about the origins of Albertine?
Cassandra: I don’t know exactly about the beginning, the origin, but I’ve been
with someone who does. He’ll be there. Where we’re going.
Kevin Lee: What do you see right now?
Cassandra: [Whispers.] Autumn.
[Moving through the building.]
Cassandra: I can see.
Kevin Lee: In the big sense?
Cassandra: [Smiles.] Think biochemistry. What would happen if you could
harness some of the electrical charges in the brain by bombarding it with certain
kinds of free particles? It’s all about power, right? About who has the power.
When Cortez dropped, you know, everything changed.
Kevin Lee: Eddie Cortez?
Cassandra: If that’s even his name.
Kevin Lee: Do you know him?
Cassandra: We’re going there right now.
Kevin Lee: What were his memories?
Cassandra: He’s supposed to be from Washington Heights. Dominican. He was
a bike messenger, and then a delivery truck driver.
Kevin Lee: Message delivery.
Cassandra: [Uses the eyedropper, grabs Kevin’s hand.] Watch this.
Kevin Lee: No.
Cassandra: Do you understand what you’re seeing?
Kevin Lee: It’s the park. Tompkins Square Park.
Cassandra: And.
Kevin Lee: He’s going to ...
Cassandra: Kill that guy.
Kevin Lee: And that guy is?
Cassandra: Addict Number One.
Kevin Lee: Who?
Cassandra: The first user. The very first one.
Kevin Lee: And why is he important?
Cassandra: Power. For the sake of control. You don’t get it do you?
Kevin Lee: Tell me.
Cassandra: Addict Number One is being killed in a memory.
Kevin Lee: How is that possible? That’s not possible? How are you going to kill
someone in a memory? It doesn’t make any sense.
Cassandra: Right. It doesn’t make any sense, but it happened.
Kevin Lee: But a memory isn’t real. It’s nowhere. There’s not a movie running
somewhere. You can’t jump into the screen and mess with the action.
Cassandra: Watch and see.
Kevin Lee: This is just a memory.
Cassandra: But the consequences are real.
INTERSCENE: Audience walks past a young Eddie Cortez. Nodding out.
Surrounded by empty droppers. Dizzy plays on a boom box
Cortez: I’m going back to the Lower East Side, and I’m going to cap that
motherfucker.
SCENE 3
LOCATION: Turbine hall. Main floor.
SETTING: Eddie Cortez warehouse.
MUSIC: The Compound on large sound system.
[Eddie Cortez with his Bike Messenger lieutenants. They are all dressed the
same. Enter Cassandra and Kevin.]
Cassandra: Eddie, I brought him.
Bike Messenger 1: His writing any good?
Cassandra: [To Kevin] They want to know if you’re a good writer.
Kevin Lee: Uh, sure. Sure. I guess. Uh, you wanting me to write something?
What do you have in mind exactly.
[They talk to each other.]
Kevin Lee: Funny you should, uh, suggest it. Because I’m writing a piece
Albertine already. That’s how I met Cassandra in the first place ...”
Bike Messenger 2: [Laughing.] Cassandra? That’s a good one. What’s that? Like
some Chinese name?
Bike Messenger 1: You did good girl.
Bike Messenger 2: You’re a first class bitch Albertine, and so it’s time for a treat.
Kevin Lee: Wait, her name is .... You named the drug after her?
Bike Messenger 1: Not necessarily. Might have named her after the drug.
Bike Messenger 2: We can’t really remember the sequence. And the thing is
memories can go either way.
Kevin Lee: But when? She can’t be ...
Eddie: The fuck you know, canary?
[Bike Messenger grabs Kevin Lee. Another gives Cassandra a bag of eyedroppers.]
Eddie: Junkie.
Cassandra: Eddie.
Eddie: Do you even know your name?
Cassandra: I remember. [Holds up droppers.]
Eddie: You forget. Like a junkie. Motherfucking junkie.
Cassandra: You forget too. That’s why they want you, Kevin.
Eddie: Shut the fuck up. [To Bike Messengers] Do him.
[Cassandra absorbed in her drugs.]
Bike Messenger 2: OK, thing is all employees got to submit to a mnemonic
background check.
Bike Messenger 1: Give me your hand. [Putting Kevin in a chokehold.] Don’t
mind if we stay kind of close?
Kevin Lee: What are you doing?
[They drop him.]
Bike Messenger 2: First time, yo?
Kevin Lee: For what?
Bike Messenger 1: Goes better if you’re thinking about what you want to know.
Chiming. Thinking of bells, bells from a church, that’s what you do, things get
chiming, the pictures get chiming. Because if you think of stuff you don’t want
to know, then -- bang.
[Kevin gets high.]
Kevin Lee: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Bike Messenger 2: Take his damn money. [Beat.] Good time?
Bike Messenger 1: Just the usual shit, names of cheap-ass girls kissing in the
park, chasing his mommy around. Some shit.
Kevin Lee: What do you want?
[Tara enters the scene. She has darker make up and isn’t as put together.]
Kevin Lee: Serena?
Tara: Kevin Lee? Lee? Look, you don’t have to like the assignment, just do the
assignment. If you don’t want it there are fifty people lined up behind you who
do.
Kevin Lee: The editor was called Tara. She had turquoise hair. She looked like a
girl I knew when I was younger. Where was that girl now?
Tara: Jesus Lee, what happened? You don’t look so good. Why didn’t you call
me? When I gave you the assignment, I assumed you were a professional right?
Because there are a lot of other people who would have jumped at the change
to write this piece.
[Kevin Lee hands her a note pad.]
Tara: What the fuck do you think we’re going to do with this, Kevin? We’re a
fucking porn magazine, remember?
Kevin Lee: Serena, I only got a second here, so listen up. I don’t know any
other way to put it, so just listen carefully. Something really horrible is going to
happen to your friend Paley.
[She leaves. Kevin Lee slightly more sober.]
Bike Messenger 2: You’re free to go.
Bike Messenger 1: We want you to learn the origin of Albertine, we want you to
write it down, everything, from day one to now, and we don’t want you to use
any fancy language or waste any time -- just want you to write it down.
Bike Messenger 2: We’ll make it worth your while. We’ve got product and living
money. This phone is for you.
Bike Messenger 1: You’ll dress like a man, you’ll consider yourself a representative
of Eddie Cortez. Remember, it’s important for you to write. Don’t worry about
anything else. We do the rest.
Kevin Lee: Sounds cool. Especially since I’m already doing that for someone
else.
Bike Messenger 1: Don’t worry about that. Nothing else exists from now on. The
magazine, your friends, your family. Only we exist. Be vigilant about forgetting.
INTERSCENE: Ricky Martin. Eddie Cortez in pop star costume singing “Shake
Your Bon-Bon.” Big performance in Turbine Hall. Bike Messengers 1 and 2 perform
as back-up dancers. If possible there should be a television with a recording of the
actual video nearby.
INTERSCENE: Movie. Kevin Lee and Serena in love in Boston Commons. The
movie is Kevin’s memory of this event. It is a series of still photographs. We do not
hear dialog, but we see actors talking. Kevin Lee narrates. The movie loops on a
television in Kevin Lee’s bedroom for the entire production.
Kevin Lee: [Voiceover] I wanted to summon her back so I called out her name.
Serena. Serena?
Remember when we drank rum and Cokes in Boston Commons? That part of the
Commons with all the willows? Your Dartmouth sweatshirt? The color of your deep
red nails? Shade called Lycanthrope.
I can see it all again. The actual event itself. Drinking rum out of paper cups.
You’re pouring Cherry Coke, and I say, “Girl, that’s not Coke.” I make a speech. A
flirtatious speech ... about the price of sugar in Latin American countries. She says
after the first drink I wont know if it’s paint thinner.
I say she’s the first girl there to have a conversation with me. A real conversation.
And those trees. I remember an Emily Dickenson poem with the line “There’s a
certain slant of light/ Winter afternoons.”
She says, You are some crazy bastard Kevin Lee.
I can remember everything. It’s perfect. We’re walking in Boston Commons and I
grab her hand. I am drunk in Boston Commons and I can remember every poem
I’ve ever memorized for a girl with green, green eyes.
And she stops me. Right there. [Beat.] She says, Kevin, I have a boyfriend.
I say no.
She says he lives in New York, and he’s going to be a filmmaker.
I say, wait, don’t go.
And she walks away.
There’s still a lot we have to talk about.
Serena.
SCENE 4
LOCATION: Small rooms along third floor, north side of Turbine Hall.
SETTING: Kevin Lee’s supply closet bedroom.
MUSIC: Kevin’s on the Tweak on portable amp.
[Kevin Lee in his supply closet room. Bike Messengers enter. Television plays
Kevin and Serena in Boston Commons.]
Bike Messenger 1: Lee, you are not attending to your duties.
Kevin Lee: Not true, no way. I just got back an hour ago. I’m doing more
research. I’m finding some great material.
Bike Messenger 1: You haven’t produced shit. We need to see some work. You
need to bring us some pages, Mr. Lee.
Kevin Lee: I’m taking some notes. They’re around here somewhere. I’ve got all
kinds of notes.
Bike Messenger 2: This conversation isn’t going very well. We hear you’ve been
moving product.
Kevin Lee: Give me a break. I’m smarter than that.
[Tara enters. She looks terrible, with dark eyes and messy clothes. She wears a
phone headset.]
Tara: You said you had the dropper. Where the fuck is it? I gave you the money.
Give me the drugs and I’ll get the fuck out of here.
Kevin Lee: Is this really happening? Did it already happen? What about the
article? What happened to you?
Tara: Just set me up and let me get out of here.
[Kevin Lee nods out.]
[Bike Messengers beat him.]
Bike Messenger 1: Fucking forgetter. The forgetters sell everything they own.
Bike Messenger 2: Twice. Because they forget they sold it the first time.
Kevin: I, I.
Bike Messenger 2: You take too much Kevin.
Kevin Lee: Look. I’ve learned a lot of stuff. Cortez. He moves around a lot.
You’re supposed to be invisible. We’re supposed to forget you. You’re, you’re ....
Bike Messenger 1: The fuck you know, Canary?
[The scene repeats. Everything is the exact same the second time through,
except that in it Tara’s lines are all pre-recorded and play on a small amplifier.
She makes all the same movements but does not talk.]
INTERSCENE: Phone Calls. Kevin Lee and Dad on the phone. Audience phones
ring; they hear the following recorded conversation.
Dad: Kevin. We told you not to call here anymore.
Kevin Lee: What?
Dad: You heard me.
Kevin Lee: I haven’t called in ... three weeks.
Dad: We can’t give you anything more. Our own savings are nearly exhausted. You
need to start thinking about how you’re going to get out of the jam you’re in without
calling us every time it gets worse. It’s you who is making it worse. Understand?
Think about what you’re doing!
Kevin Lee: What are you talking about?
Dad: I’ve told you before. Don’t raise your voice with me.
Kevin Lee: Put Mom on the line.
Dad: Absolutely not.
Kevin Lee: Let me talk to Mom!
Dad: You’ve caused her enough sorrow. It’s her nature to sacrifice, but you have
squandered this generosity. You have dishonored this family for the last time. Your
activities are shameful. It would have been easier on her, you know, if you’d just
gone in the blast.
Kevin Lee: Dad, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Listen to me.
Dad: You can’t call here every day with your preposterous lies. Your imagined webs
of conspiracy. We won’t have it. Your mother cannot get out of bed, and I am up at
all hours frantic with worry about you. How are we supposed to live? Get some help.
SCENE 5
LOCATION: Fourth floor of Turbine Hall.
SETTING: Nondescript university office.
MUSIC: Hark on portable amp and boom box.
Kevin Lee: Check, check, check. Uh, OK, do you know anything about the
origin of Albertine?
Ernst Wentworth: No one knows the origin actually. The most compelling
theory, which is getting quite a bit of attention these days, is that Albertine
has no origin. The physicists at the college have suggested the possibility that
Albertine owes her proliferation to a recent shower of interstellar dark matter.
Kevin Lee: Given this as a possibility, why are Albertine effects only visible in
New York City?
Ernst Wentworth: The more provocative question would be, according to
quantum indeterminacy, does New York City actually exist? At least, if you take
the hypothesis of theoretical physics to its logical conclusion. This would be a
brain-in-a-vat hypothesis. New York as an illusion purveyed by a malevolent
scientist. Except that the malevolent scientist here is Albertine herself. She
leads us to believe in a New York City, a New York City with post-apocalyptic,
posttraumatic dimensions and obsessions. And yet perhaps this collective
hallucination is merely a way to rationalize what is taking place: That it is almost
impossible to exist in linear time at all. Something like that. Can I borrow some
of your ...
Kevin Lee: There’s only a little left. But sure, get a buzz on. Have you attempted
a catalog of types of Albertine experiences?
Ernst Wentworth: Well, sociopaths seem to have a really bad time with the drug.
We know that. And it’s a startling fact, really. Since much of the distribution
network is controlled by sociopaths. By sociopaths, I’m referring especially to
individuals with poor intrapsychic bonding, or social skills. Individuals who
lack for compassion. It would be hard to imagine them taking much pleasure
in Albertine.
[Wentworth drops.]
On the other hand, at the top end of the spectrum are the ambitious experiences
of which you are no doubt aware. People who claim to remember future events,
people who claim to remember other people’s memories, people who claim to
have interacted with their memories. And so forth.
Kevin Lee: Does your catalog of experiences shed any light on Albertine’s
origins?
Ernst Wentworth: One compelling theory that’s making the rounds among guys
in the sciences here at the college is that Albertine has infinite origins. That she
appeared in the environment all at once, at different locations, synchronously,
according to some kind of philosophical or metaphysical randomness generator.
There’s no other perfect way to describe the effect. According to this view, the
disorder she causes is so intense that her origin is concealed in an effacement of
the moment of her origin, because to have a single origin violates the parameters
of non linearity. Didn’t we already do this part about the origin?
Kevin Lee: Shit. I guess you’re right. OK, hang on. Do you, do you think it’s
possible to manipulate the origin of Albertine, to actually control the drug, so as
to alter a specific narrative? Like, say, the rise of the Albertine crime syndicate?
Ernst Wentworth: Sure, persons of my acquaintance have done plenty of that.
At least on an experimental basis. We have had no choice. But I’m not at liberty
to go into that today.
Kevin Lee: Let’s go back to the issue of what to do about the epidemic. Do you
have a specific policy formulation?
Ernst Wentworth: I did have some good ideas about that. OK, wait a second.
I’m going to look through my papers on the subject here. I’m forgetting so much
these days . OK, my observation is that Albertine finds her allure in the fact that
the human memory is, by its nature, imperfect. Every day, in eerie ways, we are
experiencing regret over the fact that we can consume up some minimal part
of the past, but not as much as we’d like. The imperfection of memory is built
into the human animal, and as long as it is an issue, the Albertine syndicates
will be able to exploit it. Strategies for containment have to come from another
direction, therefore. Which is to say that the only thing that could conceivably
help in the long run would be to make distribution of the drug extremely
widespread. We should make sure everybody has it.
Kevin Lee: What? How would that help?
Ernst Wentworth: Since Albertine has forgetfulness as a long term side effect,
it’s possible that we could actually make everyone forget that Albertine exists.
At a certain point, everyone would be trying to avoid the forgetting, because
they can’t work effectively, they can’t even remember where work is. With
enough of this forgetting everyone would forget that they were addicts, forget
that they needed the drug to remember, forget that memory was imperfect, and
then we would be back to some kind of lowest common denominator of civic
psychology. Damaged, but equal.
Kevin Lee: How would you go about doing this?
Ernst Wentworth: [Looks him up and down.] We’re going to put it in the water
supply.
Kevin Lee: Hasn’t that been tried already?
Ernst Wentworth: What do you mean?
Kevin Lee: I think someone told me that an attack on the water supply was
recently thwarted.
Ernst Wentworth: Are you serious?
Kevin Lee: That’s what I heard.
Ernst Wentworth: Guys, are you recording all of this?
[Grad Students come in to the room and grab Kevin Lee.]
Ernst Wentworth: My deepest apologies. We have no choice but to take every
precaution. Just a couple of days ago, Claude Janings, from the linguistics
department, watched his wife disappear in front of him.
INTERSCENE: Movie. Eddie Cortez Kills Irving Paley. Location: Tompkins
Square Park dog run. The movie is the memory that Cassandra showed Kevin Lee.
It is a series of still photographs. We do not hear dialog, but we see actors talking
in the photographs. Kevin Lee narrates. The movie loops for the entire production.
Kevin Lee: [Voiceover.] Pay close attention. I saw a close-up, in my head I saw it.
The voice of the guy, accent, announcing his threats. “I’m going back to the Lower
East Side, and I’m going to cap the motherfucker, see if I don’t.” Definite speech
impediment. I was with Cassandra, I know it. But she wasn’t there. But she was.
Like the way that you know something in your dreams -- even if you can’t see it.
We were on a street, and I saw Cortez, in Tompkins Square Park, which doesn’t
exist anymore of course, and it was clear that he was searching out a particular
white guy. Cortez was searching out this guy, kinda grungy, wearing black jeans,
and it was all pre-ordained, and now Cortez had found him.
I could hear my own panicky breathing. I was in a park that didn’t exist anymore,
and I was seeing Cortez, and I was seeing this guy, this white guy.
It was like this. Even though the memory was just a memory, its effect was real. As
real as if it were all happening now. I saw it, because Cortez saw it, and Cortez gave
the memory to Cassandra, who gave it to me. [Beat.]
It was real. Addict Number One, killed by a drug dealer in memory only. His
memories killed with him.
SCENE 6
LOCATION: Eddie Cortez warehouse.
SETTING: Main floor of Turbine Hall.
MUSIC: Scene 6 on large sound system.
Kevin Lee: It all goes back to you Eddie.
Bike Messenger 2: Respect.
Kevin Lee: Mr. Cortez.
Cortez: Tell me.
Kevin Lee: I can’t just yet. But I’m hearing a lot of things. What people say.
Cortez: Go ahead.
Kevin Lee: You control Albertine in Manhattan and Brooklyn. You drive
around in a military convoy supported by cops.
Bike Messenger 1: I can’t believe we’re paying this guy for this bullshit.
Kevin Lee: At some point your gang. Sorry. [Beat.] Your organization. At
some point the Cortez organization takes out several neighborhood dealers.
Mnemonic X in Fort Greene. The 911 in Long Island City. They have all been
... neutralized.
Bike Messenger 2: That’s right Eddie.
Cortez: Shut the fuck up. [To Kevin] Go ahead.
Kevin Lee: You’re Dominican. You were a bike messenger. You grew up in
Washington Heights. You don’t go back there. You don’t go anywhere twice.
Rather you surround yourself with a bunch of guys who dress like you and use
several nondescript warehouses to move your product. You use buildings that
are falling down and you don’t do anything to fix them. You don’t want anything
to draw attention to your business. Anything that someone could remember.
Cortez: [Gives him a dropper of Albertine as a reward for information.] What
else do you know?
Kevin Lee: Like I said. It’s not what I know. It’s what I heard.
Cortez: We asked you to research the origins of Albertine.
Kevin Lee: Everyone remembers you Eddie. Or at least they think they do.
Cortez: And.
Kevin Lee: Well I have a theory.
Cortez: Go ahead.
Kevin Lee: You act like you don’t want anyone to remember you.
Bike Messenger 1: You’re repeating yourself.
Kevin Lee: You act like you don’t want anyone to remember you because it’s a
threat. You know they can get to you.
Cortez: Who?
Kevin Lee: Anyone who wants to control Albertine.
Cortez: [Gives him another dropper.] Go on.
Kevin Lee: Well, if you’re worried about it, it actually means that you you’ve
done it.
Cortez: Done what.
Kevin Lee: Moved through a memory.
Cortez: You don’t know shit.
Kevin Lee: Well.
Cortez: Well what motherfucker?
Kevin Lee: Listen, I’m just trying to do my job here. You told me to write it
down. And before I write it down I’m supposed to figure out what to write. It
all comes back to you Eddie. Mr. Cortez.
Lauren Silberman
Cortez: You want to know? You want to know what it’s like? I got high. Just like
you. And I played stickball with the boys. I chased the Catholic girls around the
neighborhood. Is that what you want, you motherfucker?
Kevin Lee: Look, I didn’t say that. I just said that you could have gone back at
some point ...
Cortez: Gone back? Gone back where? Spit it out motherfucker.
Kevin Lee: You went back. In a memory. And you killed Serena’s boyfriend.
Paley. But I don’t know why.
Cortez: You don’t know. That’s what I keep saying. Do you know what I did
to get to that motherfucker? You don’t get to choose. I looked everywhere for
that punk-ass junky. Else it was that fucking drunken fuck neighbor. His limp
fucking dick. Not even gonna say his name here. Fucking guy couldn’t even get
hard anymore. “I’m so lonely Eduardo.” “Come here Eduardo.” “For just one day
Eduardo.” Six months motherfucker!
Kevin Lee: I ... I ... I’m sorry.
Cortez: I ain’t. He had the dope. Six months. Six months to get to that fucking
punk-ass junky in Tompkins Square. So that I would never suffer before any
man.
SCENE 7
LOCATION: Ground floor of Turbine Hall.
SETTING: University shooting gallery/lab.
MUSIC: Dream Lab on large sound system.
[Television plays Kevin and Serena bookstore.]
Grad Student 2: Wow. It’s Kevin Lee! Right here in our lab!
Kevin Lee: Huh?
Ernst Wentworth: We’ve developed a hierarchy for marking events, so we don’t
forget later. Breadcrumbs, if you will. Whenever one of us goes out in public, we
bring along a poster or sign indicating the date and time. That way, if we travel
backwards on Albertine in search of particular events, we aren’t thrown off or
beguiled by unimportant days. And we bring clothing of various colors, red for
an alert, green for an all-clear. It’s a conspiracy of order, you understand, and
that’s a particularly revolutionary conspiracy right now. What we’ve additionally
found, by cataloging memories -- and we have guys who are medicated 24 hours
a day thinking about all this -- is that there are certain people who turn up
over and over. We refer to people who are present at large numbers of essential
Albertine nodal points as memory catalysts. Eduardo Cortez, for example, is a
memory catalyst, and not in a good way. And then there’s you.
Kevin Lee: Me.
Grad Student 1: If we had baseball cards of the players in the Albertine epidemic,
you’d be collectible.
Ernst Wentworth: We have a theory. And the theory is that you’re important
because you’re an historian.
Kevin Lee: I’m a writer. And not even a very good one.
Ernst Wentworth: Doesn’t matter. We’ve been trying to find out for a while
who originally came up with your assignment. It wasn’t your editor, she’s just
another addict. It was someone above her, and if we can find out who it is,
we think we’ll be close to finding a spot where the paper connects to Cortez
Enterprises. You were being groomed for this moment. Unless you are simply
some kind of emblem for Albertine. That’s possible too, of course. You’re a hero
from the thick, roiling juices of the New York City melting pot. And that is very
satisfying to us. Do you want to see? We know so much about you it’s almost
embarrassing. We even know what you like to eat, and what kind of toothpaste
you use. Don’t worry, we won’t make a big stink about it.
Kevin Lee: So you guys probably have one of those dials, on a machine where we
can go directly to a particular year and day and hour and second, right?
Ernst Wentworth: Fat chance. In fact, we have a room with a lot of cots.
Kevin Lee: A shooting gallery.
Ernst Wentworth: Just so. And we employ a lot of teaching assistants, keep them
comfortable and intoxicated for a long time and see what happens. Whatever
you might think, what we have here is a lot of affection for one another, so a
lot of stories go around like lightening, a lot of conjecture, a lot of despair, a lot
of elation, a lot of plans. You know? We see ourselves as junkies for history. Of
which yours is one integral piece.
[One assistant drops Kevin. The assistant and Wentworth hold him.]
Kevin Lee: Bob, Bob. Save my notes. Save my notes.
Wentworth: Deanna knew about the trip to the water supply, for which we’re
embarking on now. With many thanks to you for closing the loophole. You were
the only person who knew the name of the informer. Jesse is sticking with you
for the last few minutes, because there’s one more thing you have to hear before
you’re done, and then, Kevin, you’re a free man, with a load of forgetting in your
future. I hope you write a comic book or start a rock n roll band in your garage.
And I hope you do it somewhere far away from here.
INTERSCENE: Movie. Kevin Lee Warns Serena. Location: Boston bookstore.
The movie is Kevin’s memory of this conversation. It is a series of still photographs.
We do not hear dialog, but we see actors talking. Kevin Lee narrates. The movie
loops on a television for the entire production.
Kevin Lee: [Voiceover.] Just when it seemed like I would never cast my eyes on
Serena again, she was a vision before me, you know, a thing of ether, like lavender.
I could see myself in this bookstore in Boston that we used to look for cheap books.
[Beat.] The perfect winter light. She was looking at something and I lose it.
She asks me if I’m OK. I’m hyperventilating I say. Like I did back then. Anything
could set me off. A test. My dad. And I don’t tell anyone about it. Only my mother
knows.
So I’m at this store, outside with the racks, the naïve portraits on the wall, and I’m
losing it. And she asks if I’m OK. I tell her to tell me the name of the guy she’s seeing.
There’s nothing I can do.
She says that I should take drugs. For the panic thing. She says we need to talk to
my Mom.
[Beat.] I want to say, Do you know how much I think about you? Do you want
to know how you are preserved for all of human history? Because I have written
you down? [Beat.] I have gotten down the way you pull your sweatshirt over your
hands. I have gotten down your eyeliner. I have preserved the roll-out on the heels
of your expensive sneakers. I know about you and nectarines, that you aren’t happy
without coffee. I know you better than anything else.
And then suddenly all the moments were one, this moment and that, chiming
together, and I say, “Serena, I only got a second here, so listen up. I don’t know any
other way to put it, so listen carefully. Something really horrible is going to happen
to your friend Paley, so you have to tell him to stay out of Tompkins Square Park.
Tell him it’s a reliable bet.”
She asks if it’s was the panic making me say that. She says she’s worried about me.
I say, “Listen, the only reason I can explain to you about the future is because I’m in
the future. And in the future I know how much you mean to me. I could tell you all
this stuff, about New York City and how it gets bombed into rubble, about drugs,
about the epidemic that’s coming. I could tell you how strung out I’m going to get.
But that’s not the point. Somehow you’re the point. [Beat.] You’re the point. [Beat.]
Serena.”
SCENE 8
LOCATION: Eddie Cortez warehouse.
SETTING: Main corridor of Furnace Building.
MUSIC: Organ Choir on portable amp.
[Cassandra in a ridiculously hot power suit. Wearing a red bow.]
Eddie Cortez: Kevin, I guess you don’t really remember your own mother?
Kevin: My mother? What the hell are you talking about?
Eddie: Do you need me to tell you how this works? She’s the one who cooked
up our little potion Kevin. To help you with your studies Kevin. She gave it to
you. You gave it to Serena. Serena gave it to Paley. And I took it.
Cassandra: Are you all right?
Bike Messenger 2: Drop him.
Kevin Lee: Wait. I’m already high. I’m already in somebody’s memory. I don’t
even know if it’s my own. Where is the present? The part where I’m just a kid?
Bike Messenger 2: Shut that motherfucker up.
Cassandra: Here. Let time show why I’ve done what I’ve done.
Bike Messenger 2: Do him.
[Cassandra drops Kevin Lee.]
[Bike Messengers leave. Eddie Cortez pulls Cassandra away.]
Kevin Lee: [Alone.] Hey guys. Give me another drop. Nothing is chiming
motherfuckers. There is not a chime left in the belfry.
[Wentworth enters, followed by Grad Students.]
Wentworth: Kevin, this is the end of the story, where you’re going now because
your mother is about to lay her hand on yours, across the desk, Kevin, and that
will be the signal that I have to let go. Here’s what’s going to happen. The next
10 minutes of your life enables us to dose the reservoir before Eddie Cortez
finds out. We have just eliminated the person who informs on the plot, and so
we are free to go back in time, by virtue of our collective affection for the city,
and augment the water supply.
Grad Student 2: And you know what that means, Kevin. It means that Eddie
wont have time to drop the bomb Kevin. The bomb.
Grad Student 1: We believe that Eddie Cortez learns to move through memory
and drops the bomb to try to keep us from dosing the reservoir, and he drops it
on lower Manhattan because that’s where you lived in the fall of 2009.
Grad Student 2: We believe that Eddie Cortez detonates the bomb to ensure
dominance of Cortez Enterprises.
Grad Student 1: And to wipe out a number of key resistance players ...
Grad Student 2: ... Living in the East Village at that juncture.
Grad Student 1: [Beat.] So take your time in the next few minutes, because it
gives us the element of surprise we need. You’re the hero of the story Kevin.
Grad Student 2: We’re all really sorry we couldn’t tell you earlier, and we’re sorry
you had to hear this way. But we want you to know that all the traumatic events
of the last few months ...
Grad Student 1: These were things we knew you could withstand. [Beat.] When
you get to Manhattan, after talking to your mother, if it’s still gone, that’ll be the
sign. Manhattan in ruins. Your ferry driver will be wearing green. That’ll mean
that Eddie doesn’t need to go back in time ...
Grad Student 2: ... To try to find you.
[Wentworth and Grad Students say the following lines in rounds, allowing
Wentworth to finish the speech alone.]
Wentworth: That’ll mean that Eddie has given up trying to control the past
in order to control the present. Well, unless by poisoning the reservoir we
eliminate the future in which Eddie comes up with the idea of detonating the
blast, in which case Manhattan will still be standing and this entire present, with
the drug epidemic and the Brooklyn Resistance, will be nonactualizing. You
may have forgotten all of this, all of this rotten stuff, even this speech I’m giving
you now. However, if in the future, during the next forgetting, you can always
play back your tape.
SCENE 9
LOCATION: Rear dock, looking out into the Hudson River.
SETTING: The East River
MUSIC: Orpheus on portable amp.
[Kevin Lee gets into a ferryboat with a ferryman and the two head out into the
river. Kevin Lee’s voice out of a speaker near the audience.]
If you’re wondering what the future looks like, if you’re one of the citizens from
the past, wondering, let me tell you what it’s like. First thing I’ll tell you is that
the Brooklyn Bridge is gone, probably the most beautiful structure ever built
according to the madness of New Yorkers. Brooklyn Bridge is gone, or at least
the half of it on the New York side. The section on the Brooklyn side goes out
as far as the first set of pillars, and after that it just crumbles away. Like the arms
of Venus de Milo. It’s a suggestion of an idealized relationship between parts of
a city, a suggestion, not an actual relationship. And maybe that’s why intrepid
lovers go there now, lovers with thyroid cancer go up there at night, because it’s
finally a time in New York City history where you can see the night sky. That is,
if the wind’s blowing toward Jersey. They go up there, the lovers. They jump the
police barriers, they walk out on that boardwalk, the part that’s still remaining.
They look across the East River.
Their instant is endless for me, and that’s why I’m dictating these notes. What I
do is, I find the ferryman on the Brooklyn side, an Irish guy. I pay my fresh coin
to the Irish ferryman with the green windbreaker. I say, I got some business over
there. And he says, No can do pal. Business. And he says no one has business
there. But I do, I say, and I’ll make it worth your while. He takes my offer.
I tell the ferryman to take me up the coast. I want to know every rock and piling,
every remaining I-beam. I want to know it all, so we go past the footprint of
South Street Seaport, and here are all the things we’ve lost: the Municipal
Building with its spires, City Hall, the World Financial Center, the New York
Stock Exchange. And then there’s Chinatown, bombed almost to China, up to
Canal Street, which is a canal again. SOHO is gone, New York University is
gone, Zeckendorf Towers gone, Union Square Park is gone. The only thing that
is still somewhat intact, like the Acropolis of Athens, is the Public Library, but
I can’t see it from here.
The bridges are blown out, and as we pull alongside a section of the island where
I’m guessing Stuyvesant Village used to be, I say, Ferryman, put me down here,
pull your rowboat in, because I’m going in, I’m going to Tompkins Square,
because as long as it’s rubble I don’t care how hot it is. I’m going back.
[The End.]
Ben Mortimer
INFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is The Sweet Cheat?
The Sweet Cheat is a play. Actually, it’s a trespass. It’s adapted from a short
story called The Albertine Notes by Rick Moody.
Where does it take place?
The story takes place in New York City after a suitcase bomb flattens most of
Manhattan. A quarter of the population is addicted to a drug called Albertine,
a drug that allows its users perfect memory recall. Take it and you relive the
past, perfectly. A reporter, Kevin Lee, gets an assignment to find out if it’s true
that you can get to the future on it.
Whoa.
Whoa.
And where does it happen?
The trespass takes place in a massive power plant crumbling into the Hudson
River, just north of New York City.
Wait. Why are you writing this way?
It’s sort of a modified version of the format used for Frequently Asked
Questions.
Yeah, but you are essentially interviewing yourself.
Right.
OK, that’s kind of weird.
Sure. But it’s really easy to read.
Weird.
Sure.
So, OK. The Sweet Cheat takes place in an abandoned building?
Yes. Took place. That’s why it was called a trespass.
So to see it you had to go to that site?
Yes. As an audience member you met a conductor at Grand Central station.
You didn’t know where you were going. The conductor -- Kevin Balktick, our
house manager -- led you to a train. A half hour later you arrived at the site.
How many people were in the audience?
Forty. That’s about the biggest group that you can move with any efficiency.
We did four shows over two weekends in April and May of 2010 and a dress
rehearsal with a half-size audience.
So about 180 people saw the show
-- most of them found out about it
from friends in the show or listings
online. We also did a table reading
in Troy, New York in early April.
Why the reading?
It’s a process. A reading is
sometimes used in theater for producers or theaters to decide if they want
to put up a play, since a script needs to be heard out loud. A reading can also
be used in theater and sometimes in film as a sort of milestone signifying
that dozens of elements have been put in place -- actors, designers, script,
budget. It’s often the marker of a phase change between pre-production and
production. During the reading we projected photographs of the actual
building and production drawings of what the sets would look like. We also
projected three short videos -- flashbacks to a time before the bomb (more on
those in a minute). We played a couple of music pieces, showed a mock up of
the poster, and explained how a live phone call would be used during the show.
What did you learn from the reading?
I learned that the script worked. I learned that the actors were discovering
their characters. I learned that the multimedia elements were on track, and
that they benefited from good projection and good sound. And I learned,
ultimately, that the production would not work without the building itself.
Why was the building so important?
The script -- unlike the short story -- does not dwell on the destruction of New
York City. We knew the building would tell that story on its own. But at the
table reading it was often difficult to imagine the stakes involved.
The whole thing sounds pretty conventional.
It was. It was almost conservative. Actors lit up on stage. Audiences in a
darkened auditorium. The division between the two exact.
Conventional.
The performance itself was almost exactly opposite. It was charged by the
real world, the physical world, where broken glass crunched under your feet.
Where beams of light cut through broken windows. Where actors’ voices
echoed with shifting reverb. There’s something that happens when you go into
a place like that old building. It overwhelms you. It’s very much an experience.
And.
And so if we can connect a story to an experience, well, that’s something.
Did you ask for permission to work in the building?
Yes. The building is privately owned. I thought if we had permission we could
set up infrastructure for a rich sound, video, and lighting environment.
But you didn’t get it?
No. First, I asked a developer who was going under in the mortgage crisis.
Then I couldn’t find the actual owner.
Bet you didn’t try very hard.
True.
But you did it anyway.
Right. And we scaled back on some of the infrastructure that we’d originally
wanted -- like large video screens, rappelling lines, and eight-channel sound.
Stills from Kevin and Serena in Boston Commons video
Did you ask Rick Moody for permission to put on the play?
Actually, yes.
And what did he say?
He said that he couldn’t give me the rights, but that I could do it.
Pardon?
Film and performance rights are expensive. He assured me that the process is
incredibly difficult to navigate and that I couldn’t afford them. But he told me
that I could put up the play for small audiences as long as I changed the name.
He said that he wouldn’t get in my way. And then he said we’d never ever met.
He played it about as cool as anyone in his position could. He was incredibly
gracious.
Why did you call it the Sweet Cheat?
This is kind of a nerdy answer: Albertine is the name of a character in Marcel
Proust’s seven-book In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things
Past. She’s the girl who got away. The sixth volume of Proust’s novel is titled
Albertine Disparue. For some reason, English translators have given the book
a few alternative titles over the years: Albertine Gone, The Fugitive, and
The Sweet Cheat Gone. I chose the Sweet Cheat in order to maintain the
connection to Proust, the standard-bearer of fiction about memory.
Did anyone catch that reference?
Doesn’t matter. This play allowed for a tremendous amount of detail from
a huge crew of artists. For example, designer Jason Engdahl designed a
prescription label for the Albertine bottles to be used as tickets. Each one was
full of riddles and secret messages -- he generated his own bar code for example
-- and then stuck several stickers and decals to the bottles so that each person
in the audience would get a handmade physical object from each show. Details
like these were everywhere in this production. Not only do they make it better,
but they help foster an environment for collaboration where artists want to
participate by adding something of their own to the show. It’s very important
to a project like this.
Which came first? The play or the power plant?
Stills from Cortez Kills Paley video
They were independent of each other.
I’d read the story years ago, when
it was published in McSweeney’s
in 2002, and always wanted to do
something with it. I was obsessed. It
was one of those stories that I would
pass around to my friends and get
frustrated when they didn’t read it.
Later I went to the power plant (after
years of hearing about it from urban
explorers), and decided immediately
that I wanted to do something in the
space. The most important thing, I
thought, was just that people would
get a chance to see the building -- a
crumbling relic designed by some of
the same architects who had worked
on Grand Central Station.
I started imagining that space as a kind of set. It was so bleak. The fallen
grandeur of it all conveyed a real loss. It made me wonder how something so
magnificent could be left behind -- and, if that building, what else? More than
anything I wanted to show it to people. It was the same impulse I had with the
original story: Would you look at this?!
I decided that I could probably stage some sort of live version of the story.
The audience probably wouldn’t have much trouble imagining themselves
in a bombed-out New York. I could picture people moving throughout the
space, trying to assemble a narrative. For me, The Albertine Notes is perfect
for talking about the importance of stories, and, I think, the problem of living
within them. And the way the story loops back on itself is a perfect analog for
the kind of art experience I am always trying to create -- one that allows its
observers to make choices and participate, in art and in life.
So you have a building and a story. Then what?
I began to assemble collaborators in October of 2009. I talked with George
Graham about what memory would sound like. About creating a soundscape
that referenced the building itself. Sarah McMillan came on for costumes,
Pages from Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels’ prop notebook
looking for inspiration in the clothes people wear after disasters, from
Chernobyl to Katrina. Robyn Hasty came up with plans to construct sets out
of materials found on site. And Tod Seelie took pictures for the flashback
scenes.
Why did you decide to use video for the flashbacks?
It started from thinking about limited sets of tools. When I first read the short
story I imagined it as some big Hollywood movie. Good sci-fi. Like Minority
Report or something. Not the crappy stuff.
I live in a different world than all that. I have to translate ideas to the kind
of tools that are available to me. The Chris Marker arthouse classic La
Jetee offered a perfect way into the past. Like that film, we could use still
photographs, voiceover, and simple sound design to capture New York before
the blast (ie, now). It seemed like something we could accomplish without film
permits or complicated shoots.
So you just copied La Jetee?
The three videos we made probably would have been better if we did. La Jetee
was shot with a Pentax Spotmatic and printed on 35mm film. Tod Seelie shot
his images on a Canon 5D digital and we assembled them in Final Cut Pro.
Three short shoots generated roughly 4,000 frames.
How did you find actors?
The network mostly. Friend and friends of friends. I posted calls on the
Nonsense list. I told everyone I knew I was looking for actors. We ended up
with a couple dozen people who responded to a call that promised danger,
potential arrest, rehearsals in cold buildings, and no pay. Most of the people
who came on are people I’d worked with in the past. Jim Ford was the archvillain in the last play, IRT. I’ve known Ben Cerf, Lizzie Steelheart, and
Monica Hunken for a while. They’re all in Reverend Billy’s choir -- they’re up
for anything and they smile while they do it. I’ve worked with M Scrivo for a
long time, but never so intensely as this. Helen Buyniski is someone I know
from parties and other weird events; I didn’t know about her secret past as an
actor. I’d never met Hannah Corrigan; she’s an actor with tons of experience
and she’s brand new to the city. And a mutual friend pointed Trevor Zhou our
way; he’d never been in a play before, so it was his enthusiasm that got him the
part. He worked incredibly hard to become Kevin Lee, and he did. Theresa
Stills from Kevin and Serena in Bookstore video
Buchheister came on as the Assistant Director right before the first rehearsals,
which was a life-saver. She actually knows how to work with actors and make
theater, having done so in the downtown scene for years.
What going on here? In the big picture?
It’s connected to the subway play, the last big project I worked on with several
of the same people. It’s connected to the idea that art should happen anywhere
and everywhere. That it’s a disservice to confine it to black boxes and fancy
galleries.
Yeah, but you could have done it in a public park if that’s all you care about.
But the building is extraordinary. It’s an experience on its own. It’s hard to
convey this in writing. It’s so beautiful. And dramatic. And, as an audience
member, you’re in this place you’re not supposed to be, faced with the task of
making sure you don’t fall 20 feet into a pit, and every part of your body is on
pins.
In what ways did the show play with the building?
In every way. Again, it wouldn’t have worked as a play in a proper theater. The
show played to every sense. George EQed his songs to resonate in the turbine
hall. A character would start into a
speech and you would hear a train
in the distance, followed by the
sound of birds flapping above, and
then you’d see an actual bird soar
through the building -- lured there
by seed put out by lighting designer
Jason Sinopoli.
Jason also threw fine dust into the
air to catch the sunlight for the
first scene in that massive turbine hall. He and Mark Krawczuk lit incense
to smoke up the stage. These touches were all over the place: Serra Victoria
Bothwell Fels littered little blue Albertine bottles and eye droppers across the
various sets. She took a note in the short story about signs grad students used
to mark time travel and developed her own system. She then made tags and
pasted up posters that blended into the graffiti throughout the building. Dylan
Gauthier, who acted as Addict Number One in one of the videos, brought a
Sarah McMillan’s costume research photos
small rowboat to pick up Kevin Lee at the end of the play, using the Hudson
river and a crumbling old dock. And Sarah McMillan, our brilliant costumer,
dressed everyone who was working on the crew as bike messengers, or
henchman in the villain’s gang. That way, when you caught a flash of someone
moving through a doorway outside a scene you could read that action as part
of the plot. All these elements together
-- it was a dizzying.
Did the building overwhelm the story?
Yes. But less than I expected. Originally
I thought that different people would
have different experiences with the
play -- that some people would witness
certain scenes and others might not. But
we figured out a way to really move the
audience from place to place and they
focused on the story itself to a surprising
degree. The actors did a tremendous job
of demanding attention and holding on
to it once they had it.
Lauren Silberman
itself ?
How did you get into the building
Julia Solis, from the urban exploration group Dark Passage, told me once that
if there’s a fence there’s a hole in it. We found the holes.
And the audience? How did they get into the building?
We brought them through a gate into an overgrown courtyard. Once we were
all in, we locked the gate behind us and climbed a few flights of stairs in a
relatively modest brick structure with fire tiles on the floor and walls covered
with graffiti. The audience walked past Cassandra, sitting on a swing, through
a doorway, and into a large room, dim from the steel window covers.
It was still daylight out?
Yes. We wanted to light up the building, and move people around with
flashlights, but we thought the building was just too dodgy for that. We
decided on late afternoon light to make everyone look pretty -- and because
we thought 5-7:30 pm seemed like dead time for both police and real estate
agents.
Speaking of which ...
Nope. No cops. But we did have one run-in with a broker and a developer.
What happened?
During our rehearsal period we had a few field trips into the building -- to
scout, to rehearse, to build. During one of them, Robyn Hasty was working on
sets when she ran into two guys wearing hard hats.
And?
They wanted to know what she was doing. She said she was exploring the
building.
And?
Well, the broker called the owner of the building and put Robyn on the phone.
He chewed her out, told her she was trespassing, and said that he’d call the
cops next time. She apologized and walked.
You got caught. Then what happened?
We decided at that point that we had been a bit sloppy. We had been running
around the building for hours like we owned it. We climbed out of open
windows talking loudly and ambled up to the train platform like no one was
watching. But after Robyn got caught the stakes certainly seemed higher.
We decided to make a few changes. First, we cancelled all trips into the
building that were not specifically for performance -- four shows and one
dress rehearsal with a half-size audience. That meant that actors couldn’t go up
to rehearse anymore, and Robyn didn’t get all the time she needed to finish,
and we didn’t get a chance to repair the sketchiest places on the buildings
dangerous main staircase. That also meant that we cancelled the tech rehearsal
that had been planned for the building itself and instead rehearsed in the park
next to the building with diagrams of the space made out of marking flags
and pink tape. There was a lot of pantomime going on that afternoon; it was
our Dogville moment. I realized if we could convince ourselves that we were
Robyn Hasty’s preproduction set drawings
moving around a bombed-out New York with flags and tape that we could
probably do it with a massive relic of industry to support us.
We made one final adjustment. Three ins and outs for every show. The crew
went into the building at 4, the audience went in at 5, and the audience and
crew left the building together in time to catch the 7:30 train back to New
York.
Is that timing significant?
It minimized the times that a passerby might see people coming and going.
Interestingly, some people who saw the show thought leaving together was
a way to level out the audience and the cast and crew -- we came in separate
but left as one group and rode the same train back to the city. The informal
party and conversations about the performance on the train offered a pinch
of community theater that no one had really planned. Mark K. provided tea,
coffee, and chocolate.
You mentioned wanting to shore up the staircase. What did you do to
protect the audience?
Not much, to be honest. I mean, people could have been hurt. We tried
to make this very clear at several points. For example, the original press
announcement said the show was dangerous. Once someone bought a ticket
they also received warnings in several emails. We told everyone to wear good
shoes, to leave big bags at home, and that ultimately they had to be responsible
for their own safety.
Then, on the train ride up to the site, before the show officially began with
Jim Ford’s prologue, actor M Scrivo talked to small groups of people and gave
them three more safety tips: maintain three points of contact, pay attention
at all times, don’t just follow others. And then once we were on site we
would point out various hazards, like missing stairs or holes in the floor. We
wanted to make every warning possible, but ultimately leave the risk up to the
audience.
Is risk part of the play?
Yes. In a way. I mean, I worry like hell that someone will get hurt at one of
these events. And I know that it will probably happen. But there are risks in
real life that we take all the time, and they’re often worth it -- especially when
we understand the implications and make the decisions ourselves.
You’re getting carried away again.
I’m willing to take risks to see something beautiful -- to be a part of something.
It makes my life better. I trust other people to make those decisions for
themselves. That’s all.
Did the audience feel the same way?
Some people thought we were overstating the dangerous parts of the building
to make the play seem scarier, then realized that we had probably understated
them. Some said that they were afraid of heights. Others said they wanted to
take more risks in their life because of the play.
Who was afraid of heights?
Actually Rick Moody.
He came?
Yes.
What did he say?
He said the play was wildly ambitious and that we actually pulled it off.
That’s pretty nice.
And he said this other thing too:
I am as unreliable as Kevin Lee when I talk about your piece, and so there’s really
no point in saying anything. When I am saying I was moved I am saying I did
have ANY NUMBER OF TIMES moments during the play when I felt the
hairs-on-the-back-of-my-neck as in all brushes with the uncanny, and they had a
lot to do with the tableaux of various personages and with the decisive melancholy
of the setting and with the Hudson. The uncanny is good, and is important.
That’s a pretty good place to finish.
I agree.
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